Seek Giacometti’s “The Palace at 4 a.m.” Go back two hours. See towers and curtain walls of matchsticks, marble, marbles, light, cloud at stasis. Walk in. The beggar queen is dreaming on her throne of words…You have arrived at the web home of Marly Youmans, maker of novels, poetry collections, and stories, as well as the occasional fantasy for younger readers.

Youmans (pronounced like 'yeoman' with an 's' added) is the best-kept secret among contemporary American writers. --John Wilson, editor, Books and Culture

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

The Monkey Gull & the Palace Pot Boy

This is the pot boy.

First, I have one thing to say: I am not illiterate. That is a scurrilous—catch the lingo, eh?—rumor begun by my enemies in the kitchen, namely the Lower Pot Scrubber and the Middle-management drone, the Disposer of Leftovers.

M. is still hanging out in the garden, waiting for her birthday to end. She has been annoyed all week, and she’s evidently still annoyed now that the great day has arrived. Age without wisdom is a drag, she has been heard to say, cold cabbage leaves draped over her head and raindrops splashing her nose.

If she waits for wisdom to arrive, she’s going to be huddled in a snow bank before long.

What I say is, at least she's not the Jackass of the Week.

Anyway, it’s my turn.

I paid a visit to the monkey—cuddly little beast—on Vanderworld and decided to write about a family gull: a monkey gull. There’s a lot of gulling going on around here. After all, this is a family where the eldest son tried to make his adorable fellow pre-schoolers walk the plank during an impromptu performance of Peter Pan, set on the tiptop level of the multi-story wooden play tower. He made a fierce little Hook. That led to a parent-teacher conference on the subject of little people who cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Rather a laugh—with M. involved.

But the favorite gull is always the gull of the un-gullible. (Not literate. Pooh! Everybody knows that the Pot Boy is always Royalty in disguise.)

This one involves M. and her husband, turning left somewhere on the Outer Banks.

Husband: “Something’s been hit… It looks like—it looks like a greenmonkey!”

M: “Oh, they’re an awful nuisance. Been that way for years around here. You wouldn't believe the trouble they cause--”

H (astonished, but admittedly Not From These Parts): Monkeys?

M: Green monkeys. You know how the beach in North Carolina and Maryland just gets overrun with those little Spanish ponies? And so they have pony round-ups and auctions?

H admits the truth of what she says.

M: It’s the same thing with the green monkeys. It’s like the parakeets in Louisiana—people go outside to clean the cage and pretty soon there are flocks of parakeets everywhere. My mother all on her own was responsible for a small flock. And she’s a birder.

And pretty soon M. has the H. believing that packs of wild green monkeys roam the beaches, wreaking havoc on the local ecosystem, causing Committees and headaches for hapless park rangers, plucking the mating plumage from egrets (squee-awk!), tormenting and sometimes riding the wild ponies…

I am not the Chamber Pot Boy. I am the Pot Boy and belong to the kitchen. I am, of course, royalty in rags, and, as such, rather well educated. (Little Latin, Less Greek, all that sort of thing.)

M. had a pretty festive birthday despite herself and will be back anon. (She has, by the by, some kind of awful story about seagulls on the Ocracoke ferry, involving her mother's new Nikon, that would please you...)

Alas, I must once again remind large numbers of Chinese salesmen and other worldwide peddlers that if they fall into the Gulf of Spam, they will be eaten by roaming Balrogs. The rest of you, lovers of grace, poetry, and horses (nod to Yeats--you do not have to be fond of horses), feel free to leave fascinating missives and curious arguments.

The Ferrol Sams Award; Silver Award in Fiction, ForeWord BOTYAs

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanagetells of a young boy's travels through the black heart of Depression American & his search for light both metaphorical & real. Writing with a controlled lyrical passion, Marly Youmans has crafted the finest, & the truest period novel I've read in years.-Lucius Shepard, 1943-2014

photo: Paul Digby, 7/2014

KINDRED SPIRITS

interior vignette, Glimmerglass

Praise for A DEATH AT THE WHITE CAMELLIA ORPHANAGE

*A REVIEWER:"Its themes and the power of its language, the forceful flow of its storyline and its characters have earned the right to a broad national audience"John M. Formy-Duval for About.com.

*A BOOKSELLER:"I agree with one reviewer that said this is destined to be an American classic." Nancy Olson, Quail Ridge Books, NC

Val/Orson

BOOKS AND CULTURE BOOK OF THE YEAR '09 UK: P. S. Publishing

Ingledove

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005

Catherwood

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996

Little Jordan

Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, 1995

My friend Marly Youmans is one of America's finest writers. Anyone who knows her work even slightly would have little trouble reaching that conclusion. From the very beginning of my awareness of her work, I realized that her voice was unique, her grasp of technique in poetry and fiction stunning, and her imagination boundless. She seems to combine two impossible-to-resolve things simultaneously: traditional forms and an edgy, almost avant-garde sensibility.-novelist/poet Philip Lee Williams

The Throne of Psyche

Pages Ogled

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CONTACT Marly at

Lyrics, narratives, monologue, longpoem, short story, novella, novel.In 2015: "Maze of Blood." My newest novels are "Glimmerglass" and "A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage" (Mercer, 2014, 2012.) My newest collection of poetry is "The Foliate Head" (UK: Stanza Press, 2012), though last year saw "The Throne of Psyche" (Mercer.) Brand new: a post-apocalyptic epic in blank verse about a group of seven children, "Thaliad" (Montreal, CA: Phoenicia Publishing.) I was also on the judging panel of the National Book Award in Young People's Literature for 2012. I'm a mother of three, spouse of one, a Southerner among the Yanks!